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TAC 2010: Swahili, Latin, (French) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Rhoda Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5604 days ago 166 posts - 196 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, Swahili, Ancient Greek, German | Message 1 of 115 30 July 2009 at 1:13am | IP Logged |
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EDIT:
One log will be enough to cover my work with whatever language(s) I decide to take on. The early part of the log covers mostly Swahili, French appears pretty soon as well, and Russian enters at the end of page 9 (and exits soon thereafter). Latin arrives on page 10 but doesn't get a serious start until page 12. FRENCH: Starting point is advanced fluency. Next summer's jobs make it important to polish my slightly rusty speech/listening. Goal is simply to become as native-like as possible by May/June 2010. Methods: French movies, French books, and French conversation. SWAHILI: Starting off with a month's hard study. Goal is to be conversational by the end of 2009, as well as be able to read simple books without a dictionary; compose basic, cohesive paragraphs; and understand Swahili spoken at normal speed. LATIN: Starting from zero. Goals? Unknown. I'd just like to know why I'm messing with Latin when I already have too much to do! HITLIST PLANS: I'd like to get to Basic Fluency in Swahili and Intermediate in Latin before picking up anything new, and at the moment I'm not sure whether the next language I pick up should be German or Turkish. I'm leaning slightly toward German...but who knows? Regardless, I'd like to have a strong grasp of both in the next 3-4 years, as well as Advanced Fluency in Swahili and Latin. As for Russian, I'll have to find time for it in the next decade. Is this too ambitious? I have no clue. I guess I'll find out. ---------------------------------------------------------- A month and two days later, things are starting to make sense. Not that I am even close to competent. Several weeks ago, I would read a simple Swahili dialogue and understand nothing. Now, I can read through some WikiSwahili articles and...understand a little. One of the toughest things for me is expanding vocabulary. I know the basic grammar structures, but then I'll bump up against unfamiliar words. This has also been one of my greatest struggles in French (I'm working on it!), and it seems I will have to put a lot of work into my Swahili vocab too. At the moment though, relative pronouns are what have been spinning my brain around. I thought I had them (yule anayekaa, wale wanaokaa, fagio zilizotoka dukani, etc.) only to learn that there are MORE forms or whatever for them. Challenge is good though. I did have a tiny breakthrough today with "-enye," a form I'd noticed around, speculated about, but not fully understood. As of today, I've moved on to Unit 9 of Teach Yourself Swahili. I'm moving at a relatively brisk pace (or so it feels), but only because I am taking Swahili 101 at university in the fall and will be reviewing everything then (TY is our textbook). I've also made it through the first 18 units of FSI tapes. They've mostly covered stuff like, "Nina njaa. Una chakula? Nina machungwa na mananasi. Niletee machungwa. Una ndizi? Ninazo nyingi." (I'm hungry. Do you have food? I have oranges and pineapples. Bring me oranges. Do you have bananas? I have many.) They do speak rather faster than the people on TY, which is useful, and I think it's helping my listening and speaking skills. That's all for now; hopefully I'll have lots of progress to report soon! Edited by Rhoda on 23 September 2009 at 3:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kyrie Senior Member United States clandestein.deviantaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5733 days ago 207 posts - 231 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese | Message 2 of 115 30 July 2009 at 2:33am | IP Logged |
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Good luck, Rhoda! :)
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| Rhoda Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5604 days ago 166 posts - 196 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, Swahili, Ancient Greek, German | Message 3 of 115 30 July 2009 at 3:34am | IP Logged |
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Thanks!
Brief update: listened to the TY CD for several lessons including Unit 9 for the first time. Yeeeeesh. Listening is where I seem to struggle most with foreign languages; with French, I can read/write/speak fine but listening is always more of an effort. I'm looking to improve my French & Swahili listening, so if anyone has advice, I'd love to hear it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| delta910 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5879 days ago 267 posts - 313 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German | Message 4 of 115 30 July 2009 at 4:02am | IP Logged |
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On listening advice, one thing that I did to improve my Spanish listening was have the text with me and while the "track/dialog" was playing, I would point to each word that was spoken in the Spanish dialog. I would do this over and over again. Usually about a half hour did it for me. This helped me a lot in finding when words started and ended. Also, I just listened to the dialogs over and over again, even if I didn't understand it at the time. Basically, I would walk around with my mp3 player all day and have the dialog that I'm studying playing and the previous ones also. I would actively listen to the dialogs rather than passively.
Hope this helps somewhat. Have a question PM me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhoda Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5604 days ago 166 posts - 196 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, Swahili, Ancient Greek, German | Message 5 of 115 30 July 2009 at 4:49am | IP Logged |
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Thanks! That is a good idea; I tend to multitask and do listening practice while cooking, driving, working out, etc. Maybe not always the best, especially when I have no idea what they are saying! I'll definitely do some more listening with the text alongside since "words-running-together-syndrome" is a frustrating stumbling block.
It's funny, because TY speakers go a LOT more slowly than FSI, but I usually understand more of the FSI on a first run-through. Probably because FSI repeats a lot and to an extent you can predict the type of thing they will say next. Whereas if I am not sure what is coming, or if someone gives a long speech in Swahili, I end up missing a few words (um, or sentences...) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EDIT: Just found 2 additional sources: 1) http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/swahili/index.html (audio) 2) http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/aflang/swahili/Exercises/i ndex.htm (exercises) I'll be returning to try them out tomorrow. Edited by Rhoda on 30 July 2009 at 10:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhoda Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5604 days ago 166 posts - 196 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, Swahili, Ancient Greek, German | Message 6 of 115 30 July 2009 at 3:28pm | IP Logged |
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On the agenda for today:
1-Listen to FSI 18 (again), and 19A. I could probably go through more if I have time; so far they are reviews of various concepts learned in TY. EDIT: Listened to Units 18 and 19A. Still continuing with the food theme; today, I told people that their oranges/pineapples/coconuts are rotten (-bovu). 2-Go over and over and over TY Unit 9 dialogue (with & without text). EDIT: Listened to the dialogue with the text. Missed a little meaning but got all the words. I've been slowly picking up phrases; for example, "Usiwe na wasiwasi" (Don't worry), and I understand the grammar enough to modify the phrase as needed. "Asiwe na wasiwasi" (He shouldn't worry) "Wasiwe na wasiwasi" (They shouldn't worry) etc. 3-??? Figure out the second relative pronoun structure? Or would I be better off reading and listening to get the hang of it before learning the actual rule? In any case, I'll probably go over some Unit 9 grammar, have another look at "-enye," make some sentences using "-ki-" "-ja-" and "-sha-" EDIT: some practice: Tukienda Mbeya, tutapanda basi. (If we go to Mbeya, we will get the bus.) Ukiwa na nafasi... (If you have time...) Mkiondoka hapa... (If you set off from here...) Wasipokuwa na pesa hawatasafiri. (If they have no money, they won't travel.) Tusipokwenda hotelini... (If we don't go to the hotel...) Mananasi yako yasipofaa sitayanunua. (If your pineapples aren't suitable, I won't buy them.) Umekwenda Nairobi? Sijaenda. (Have you been to Nairobi? Not yet.) Mmepika samaki? Hatujapika samaki bado. (Have you cooked the fish? Not yet.) Amenunua chumvi? Hajanunua chumvi. (Has he bought salt? Not yet.) Umewekesha chumba? Sikuwekesha. (Have you reserved a room? I have not (and don't plan to.)) Umeshakiona kitabu hiki? (Have you already seen this book?) Nimeshakiona. (I've already seen it.) Ameshaleta ndizi. (He has already brought bananas.) Ameshazikula nazi zangu? Ameshazikula. (Has he already eaten my coconuts? He has already eaten them.) 4-Go over my online sources. EDIT: went to this website: http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/swahili/audio_zawawi/zawaw i.html and went through Lessons 1, 2, and 3 (review of basic stuff--greetings, simple questions and statements in present tense) Also went here: http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/afl ang/swahili/Exercises/i ndex.htm and did the Elementary Swahili portion. I think that's as much as I'll use it, though I did learn some new vocab: -Jaribu tena = try again -somo (masomo) = lesson I also visited the UGA KIKO website and watched the Unit 1 and 2 videos again, and also started on Unit 3 videos. Found a new site: http://mwanasimba.online.fr/E_index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As for French, I've studied it for 14 years and am not too worried about losing everything, but when I let it go for too long, I do get a little rusty. So I've begun reading Bienvenue au Club, which I first read in middle school and found quite challenging. We'll see how much difference 5 or 6 years make! So far, just a few pages in, it's a fun and straightforward read. Edited by Rhoda on 31 July 2009 at 4:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhoda Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5604 days ago 166 posts - 196 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, Swahili, Ancient Greek, German | Message 7 of 115 30 July 2009 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
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I looked through a lot of the new material I unearthed yesterday, and WOW there is a lot.
1) http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/swahili/audio_zawawi/zawaw i.html Online Audio for Kiswahili kwa Kitendo 2) http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/swahili/audio_hinn/hinnebu sch.html Online Audio for Kiswahili, msingi wa kusema kusoma na kuandika 3) http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/culturetalk/tanzania/ Culture Talk Tanzania, which has some videos & transcipts in Swahili 4) http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/collection/lm_kenya/ke_ind ex.html Swahili in Kenya (the audio doesn't work on my computer, but I can access the transcipts) 5) http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/collection/lm_tanzania/kiI ndex.html Swahili in Tanzania (ditto above) I'll be using these resources occasionally, in addition to TY and FSI and reading WikiSwahili with a dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhoda Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5604 days ago 166 posts - 196 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, Swahili, Ancient Greek, German | Message 8 of 115 31 July 2009 at 4:54am | IP Logged |
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(French)
Read a bit more of Bienvenue au Club. A fast read so far! At least I know I haven't backslid since middle school haha. It's also nice to rediscover all the horsey lingo that had been residing unused in the back of my mind: "un sabot," "un étrier," "un fanon," "une crinière," etc. If anyone has French music recommendations, let me know; I've been listening to Kyo, Sherifa Luna, the Les Choristes soundtrack, and French Disney songs lately. Edited by Rhoda on 31 July 2009 at 4:55am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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